Healing

Many years ago I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. When I finally got the diagnosis the relief was instant, like a wave that pushed me under to a place where I no longer had to panic and struggle, I could simply drown amongst the answers. Extreme sufferers of BPD also have dissociation, which I had for so many years that it has changed all of my memories, thoughts and feelings on levels I can't even being to unpick.

I started therapy after my third suicide attempt. My last therapist here in London was the best. Calmly but emotively we worked through so much that cataloging it all would take years to get out. He told me that in his many years of being a psychotherapist, my background was by far the most unstable that he'd ever encountered, that I would no doubt have wound up a statistic, a name in the obituaries of a crumpled up morning newspaper, had I not sought help. I would have spiralled and split so completely that I could never have been whole, because in the end I was not only dissociating when bad things happened, I was dissociating when anything happened which triggered an emotional reaction. BPD sufferers are described as people who are the emotional equivalent of a third degree burn. It's the most perfect description ever.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

Finding My Way Back

A few weeks ago my therapist sat across from me and asked about my homework (it's homework. And I get to pay �50 an hour for the privilege of doign homework. I'm finally in a form of private school, albeit sans ties and tacky knee socks). I'd had homework to do and done it I had, only I wasn't sure that it was correct. It was like math homework-I needed a key in the back with the answers to every other question. Luckily, mental illness is not something that comes with a little red pen so it was clear he wouldn't be able to mark points off for punctuation errors.

I was to come up with how I felt about addressing some of my issues. The past 8 months have been fact-finding only, to get a view of the mountains before determining where to start the mining operation. Now that the view's been had, the earth-moving equipment is being brought in.

I had decided how I wanted to address my issues-I was going to see if we could find a way to handle it scientifically-identify problem. Examine. Theorize as to nature of problem. Hypothesize about treatment. Apply treatment. Mark issue off on checklist. Move on. These formulas I am familiar with, and like a true punnet square addict I was prepared to get my number 2 pencil out and give it a go. Once upon a time I was a crunchy-granola anthropology student, but all these years as an engineer have taken their toll on me and the Scientific Method is as critical to making choices as my Benefit Brow Zings are to my eyebrows-I don't leave home without either one of them.

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She also covers Postpartum Depression. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

What the Hell is the Matter With You

Mr. Y and I signed up for a new doctor in town. With the NHS, this means visiting the GP and doing a brief physical, getting an NHS number, etc. The form is straightforward-name, age, address, last time you saw a doctor, and a list of boxes that you check yes or no to, the standard things that your pen flies over and makes a tiny mark in a box.

Do you have or have you had heart trouble? No.
Do you have or have you had kidney trouble? No.
Do you or have you had cancer? Yes.
Do you smoke? No.

And then the one that stopped my pen. The one that made me think and made me wonder how to proceed.

Do you have a mental illness?

Do I have a mental illness? Mr. Y flew through his questions ticking no, and there I was, stuck. Do I have a mental illness...

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Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

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Helen's Story

Helen is the contributing editor for Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder. She writes daily at Everyday Stranger where she also chronicles life with her twins, Nick and Nora.

My name is Helen.

And I'm crazy.

Not crazy like going to work wearing a tutu, Wellingtons, and a Napoleon jacket with silver epaulets and pulling it off, even though really - that's crazy. I mean crazy as in spending a little time inside of a place where people get to spend the night in rooms that have restraints on the beds. I mean certifiably crazy, although I never got a certificate to hang on my wall.

In 2003 I was finally diagnosed with something called borderline personality disorder, accented with severe dissociation. This came one month after I went right over the edge and tried to commit suicide. I was briefly hospitalized. This was, unfortunately, not the first time I tried to kill myself, but it was most definitely my last.

The DSM IV criteria for BPD are:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. [Not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating, substance abuse, reckless driving).[Again, not including suicidal or self-mutilating behavior covered in Criterion 5]
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-mutilating behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars, or picking at oneself.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood (e.g., intense episodic dysphoria, irritability, or anxiety usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days).
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness, worthlessness.
8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger (e.g., frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights).
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms.

I went through many years of psychotherapy to help overcome my mental illness. I don't know if you can ever be cured, I think it's something we grow to live with. I have to make conscious efforts at some things, including avoiding falling into previous eating disorders I had, but while I don't think that you can ever be truly cured of a mental illness, it is something I have worked hard to overcome to be a better person, not only for myself but for my partner and my gorgeous babies, born to me after years of fertility treatment (and who are hanging in there with me while I battle postpartum depression).

There is a lot of stigma attached to being mentally ill. I'm here if you want to talk, because I know about the stigma. I know how bad it feels inside. And I know how amazing it can be to just have someone to talk to.